Americans ready their torches

As I think everyone can sense, there's a rising tide of anger against the banks and the bankers. We're not much given to protests and demonstrations here in the US, but we're not going to get through this economic disaster without unrest. That's just not historically tenable. Perhaps that's why the media steadfastly ignored the protests in Greece some months back. Greek protesters burned several banks to the ground, but the US media claimed the riots were against the police, who had recently killed a teenaged boy. Those in charge didn't want anybody getting any ideas over here across the pond.

Last autumn, there was a spectacular public protest (via email and telephones) against the banker bailout bill, which authorized giving $700 billion of the American people's money to Wall Street's mega-banks. Reportedly, calls were coming in to Congressional offices at a rate of 50, 100, even 200 to 1 -- against the banks, of course.

Around that time there was a Wall Street protest which featured this sign, rather famous out here on the inter-tubes:



That's been made into T-shirts and stickers, to boot.

More recently, Jim Kunstler -- always the curmudgeon -- was quite funny about the complacency of bankers:

One mistake that the banking elite and their lawyer paladins made the past decade was their show of conspicuous acquisition -- of houses especially -- in easy-to-get-to places where anyone can see them, for instance an angry mob in Fairfield County, Connecticut, or Easthampton, New York. Unlike the beleaguered elites of South Africa (where I visited recently), who live behind layers of fortification, the executives of Citibank, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and a long list of hedge funds, will be found cringing in their wine-lockers behind a measly layer of privet hedge when the tattooed minions of Glen Beck come a'calling....

Social phase-change, as in the formations of mobs, is nothing to screw around with. Once the first window is broken, all bets are off for social stability. My guess is that the various bail-out gifts to the bankers are long past having gone too far in the eyes of this increasingly flammable public....

By the time Lloyd Blankfein [CEO of Goldman Sachs] sees the torches flickering through his privet, it will be too late to defend the honor of his cappuccino machine.

And then there was the Rolling Stone piece by Matt Taibbi, titled The Great American Bubble Machine: From Tech Stocks to High Gas Prices, Goldman Sachs Has Engineered Every Major Market Manipulation Since the Great Depression, and They're About to Do It Again.

There's been a raft of stories about Goldman Sachs, involving a former employee who stole proprietary trading software. It's come out that anyone in possession of these programs could manipulate stock markets. Which is also an admission that Goldman Sachs can manipulate stock markets. Gee, who'da thunk it?

Just today, the usually humorless Mike Shedlock wrote a post equating the Federal Reserve with Darth Vader's Empire:

Our hero, Ron "Skywalker" Paul, has managed to gather sufficient support to overthrow the Evil Empire widely known as the Fed.

In a brazen attempt to beat back our hero, the Empire has taken its case directly to Congress, seeking more power to rape and pillage the populace under cloak of secrecy.

The Washington Post picks up the story in Sith Lord Kohn warns Congress on meddling in the Empire's affairs.

The Federal Reserve Evil Empire on Thursday launched a robust defense of its independence and warned that efforts in Congress to put monetary policy under political sway would hurt the economy Empire.

Fed Vice Chairman Sith Master Donald Kohn said opening up some of the U.S. central bank's most sensitive decisions to political scrutiny could result in higher long-term interest rates and hurt the United States' credit rating discrimination against the Sith Lords.

Testifying before a congressional panel, Kohn sought to beat back a proposed bill that would open the U.S. central bank's policy decisions to audits by a federal an Ewok watchdog agency. More than half of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives Ewoks have signed as co-sponsors of the measure.

More importantly, a major Hollywood gangster film has just come out, about bank robber John Dillinger. The New York Times understands the darker significance of the film:

If the administration wants to be reminded of how quickly today’s already sour mood can turn rancid, Michael Mann’s haunting “Public Enemies” could not be a more apt refresher course. The casting alone tells you where the audience’s sympathies will lie: Dillinger is played by America’s reigning male sweetheart, Johnny Depp, while his G-man pursuer, Melvin Purvis, is in the hands of the thorny Christian Bale....

Detective magazine polled movie theater owners during Dillinger’s yearlong spree of 1933-34, and found that in terms of drawing audience applause Public Enemy No. 1 beat out F.D.R. and Charles Lindbergh....

[O]rdinary law-abiding Americans even wrote letters to newspapers and politicians defending Dillinger’s assault on banks. “Dillinger did not rob poor people,” wrote one correspondent to The Indianapolis Star. “He robbed those who became rich by robbing the poor.”

Gorn writes that the current economic crisis helped him understand better why Americans could root for a homicidal bank robber: “As our own day’s story of stupid policies and lax regulations, of greedy moneymen, free-market hucksters, white-collar thieves, and self-serving politicians unfolds, and as banks foreclose on millions of families’ homes, workers lose their jobs, and life savings disappear, it becomes clear why Dillinger’s wild ride so fascinated America during the 1930s.” An outlaw could channel a people’s “sense of rage at the system that had failed them.”

And here I might make one final point: the unemployment rate is much higher for teenagers and those in their early 20's than for other age groups. In fact, the age group which is doing best in the job market are those over 55. This means we have a great many aimless, impoverished young people with a lot of time and anger on their hands. Not a good mix. And if they dutifully went to school and did as they were told and jumped through every hoop, believing this would net them a comfortable salary, they're that much more pissed off when the promised good job doesn't manifest.

During the Great Depression, many protests went unreported in major newspapers, for fear of "contagion." This time around, everything will be reported via the internet. Should be interesting times.